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Stringing Them Along

The Sun doubled its sunspot groups over a little more than 3 days (Mar. 11-14, 2013) and strung most of them in a jagged row. The close-up video shows a pair of sunspot groups emerging in just over a few hours on the 11th, then populating their surroundings with lots of mini-spots. Another larger sunspot rotated into view also mid-way into the 11th. Sunspots, cooler and darker regions of intense magnetism, can last from hours to weeks and are often the source of solar storms. We'll see what these spots have in store for us over the next week or so. A second image (bottom) (magnetogram) taken at the same time shows the magnetic field with the darkest and lightest areas indicating the strongest magnetic forces. Credit: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)